SiliconBeat

Earlier this month, I spent a morning at the offices of venture capital firm DCM in Palo Alto chatting with co-founder Dixon Doll and general partner Peter Moran. Though it was my first time meeting them in person, I had spoken with Doll previously in his role as chairman of the National Venture Capital Association.

In that capacity, Doll had overseen the creation of NVCA’s “4 Pillar Plan” to restore liquidity to the capital markets. Despite my initial skepticism, I found a lot to like in the plan. I particularly appreciated that the tone of the plan was not about blaming others (i.e., Sarbanes-Oxley), but explored the complex trends that had undermined the IPO markets and proposed a number of positive steps.

There was no agenda to this follow-up meeting, other to meet and get Doll’s and Moran’s thoughts on the state of the venture capital industry. Doll, in particular, has been active in the valley about three decades. And I came away with a lot of interesting thoughts from both men. Here are few topics that have stuck with me since our chat:

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Bloomberg News estimated today that New Enterprise Associates stands to make a 26-fold return on its initial investment in Data Domain, the maker of storage backup tools that agreed to be acquired for $2.1 billion by EMC after a bidding war with NetApp.

NEA should make Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, I posted some thoughts on Marc Andreessen and word that he and business partner Benjamin Horowitz had raised a $300 million venture fund. I thought the amount raised recognized Andreessen’s ascension to the role of valley godfather, while also indicating that the valley tends to view success along yardsticks such as taking companies public and personal wealth (and shareholder wealth) rather than the ability to build sustainable business models.

That sparked a nice conversation in the comments about what does constitute success as an entrepreneur.

By total coincidence, his PR folks contact myself and my colleague Scott Duke Harris for a pre-briefing on the official news about the fund just a few days after that post. We met with Andreessen and Horowitz to discuss the news, which was released today. 

You can read Scott’s story here.

During our conversation, we covered a few other tidbits that didn’t make Scott’s story, but that I though were relevant to my previous blogpost. So let me share a few of them here: 

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Google tossed another $2.6 million into its investment in 23andMe, the privately held personal genetic testing  company co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, who is married to Google founder Sergey Brin. The investment was part of a second round of funding in the company’s Series B preferred shares that included New Enterprise Associates, which negotiated the terms of the investment, according to a filing Google made today with the SEC.

Brin, who invested Read the rest of this entry »

Last week we learned that Marc Andreessen and his business partner, Benjamin Horowitz, had raised a $300 million venture fund. Without question, it’s a remarkable achievement to attract that much money in what has to be one of the most inhospitable environments for raising venture capital in memory. 

The size of the fund is also impressive, though on its own won’t change the world, or have a discernible impact on the valley’s start-up economy. But on a symbolic level, the fund’s success certifies Andreessen’s place as the new godfather of Silicon Valley.

Andreessen embodies so many facets of the valley. He is an innovator, an entrepreneur, investor, networker, and in some cases, kingmaker. If Andreessen accomplishes nothing more from here on out, his place in Silicon Valley history is secure.

Which is why it may sound surprising that I find this endorsement so curious. It’s not necessarily misplaced. But it does speak volumes about the career Andreessen has carved out, his philosophy, and the priorities and values of Silicon Valley. Read the rest of this entry »

A conversation with Bobby Kennedy Jr. can be an illuminating, if a bit of a strenuous, experience.

Kennedy, who was added as a partner specializing in cleantech at San Bruno’s VantagePoint Venture Partners, this week, is one of those big-idea guys.

I talked to him recently for a profile I was doing of Shai Agassi, the tech exec turned electric-car guru. VantagePoint invested in Agassi’s firm, Better Place of Palo Alto, and Kennedy introduced him at a press event when Better Place said it was going to work with the Bay Area big-city mayors to bring EV chargers here.

Anyhow, Kennedy was on his car phone and what I thought would be a 5-10 minute interview stretched into a 30-minute conversation. And it only ended when his cell phone cut out.

Kennedy, the 54-year-old son of Bobby Kennedy and nephew of JFK and Teddy, is an environmental lawyer and activist. He also hosts a radio show, and our conversation that started with electric cars expanded to include the melting Arctic ice cap, China, energy storage and more.

The last thing he told me before his phone clicked out: “This is about transforming our whole country into a self-sufficient nation. What happens then is a whole series of miracles that helps restore our national prestige.”

Like I said, a big idea guy.

VPVP says he’ll focus on water issues, and join the board of 2 of its portfolio companies –  Premium Power, a leading manufacturer of energy storage solutions, and Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies Inc., a wastewater remediation company producing environmentally safe commercial fertilizer.

Let me start by saying that I have a ton of respect for New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. With that out of the way, let me also say that this weekend that Friedman floated one of the worst ideas I’ve heard in a long time.

I’m talking about his column, posted on Saturday, called “Start Up the Risk-Takers.”  Read the rest of this entry »

Social Media Networks, the provider of “word-of-mouth” marketing via online social networks, raised $6.5 million last month, according to a regulatory filing it made today with the SEC, and intends to sell $1 million more of itself in the offering.

While the Regulation D filing doesn’t detail the buyers and how much each spent in the offering, the list of “Related Persons” includes Read the rest of this entry »

In this age of disintermediation, when middle men of all kinds are rendered increasingly irrelevant by online technology, it seems only fair that the same force takes aim at the people who helped finance the Internet’s spread: venture capitalists.

YouNoodle, the San Francisco startup that last year launched an online crystal ball of sorts that uses Read the rest of this entry »

In case you were wondering how to obtain a copy of your birth certificate in New Mexico, then you could refer to a new article posted at wikihow.com, which would be the Web sites 50,000th such article, and the occasion for a celebratory press release from the Menlo Park venture begun four years ago by Jack Herrick with the Read the rest of this entry »